Preface.
It, no doubt, amounts to an unpardonable vanity and gross presumption on the part of one of my humble attainments to venture to place this translation—faulty in more respects than one, as it is bound to be—before the public; far more so, to intend it for the recreation of European and other readers, whose, mother tongue is not Bengalee, but who can meet on a common platform with the natives of Lower Bengal through the medium of English. But the temptation to enable the latter class of readers to have an idea, however imperfect, of our idolized Bankim’s rare qualities of head—his capacity to mature plots, his acquaintance with the various types of human nature, his power of vivid description, his close adherence to the central object, and the facility and grace of his writing—in short, all those attributes which singled him out as the greatest of all Bengalee writers of fiction—has goaded me on to incur the risk.
The closing scene of Bankim’s life was busy with a systematic and scholarly study of the Gita—the immortal evidence of Aryan culture—the solace of senility of every sentient existence. To my mind, ‘Sitaram’ seems to be an illustration of some of its doctrines. However diversified educated Bengalee opinion may be as to the merits of this novel, and there are critics, who do not disguise their opinion as to its inferiority, in one respect it
